#370: Adam Savage on Great Tools, Great Projects, and Great Lessons

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This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time. If I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably athletic greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in the four hour body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that. And I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance and overall It covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole food meals throughout the rest of the day.

And if you want to give Athlet Greens a try, they're offering a free twenty count travel pack for first time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first time buyer, you now get For a limited time, an extra seventy nine dollars in free product. So check out the details at atleticgreens.com forward slash Tim. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Tim for your free travel pack with any purchase. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types. My guest today is Adam Savage. You can find him online at Don't Try This on Twitter.

or the real Adam Savage on Facebook or Instagram. Adam has spent his entire life gathering skills that allow him to take what's in his brain and make it real. He's built everything from ancient Buddhas and futuristic weapons to fine art sculptures and dancing vegetables. Yes, I said dancing vegetables. Adam's previous positions include projectionist, animator, graphic designer, carpenter, interior and stage designer, toy designer, welder, and scenic painter. And he's worked with every material and in every medium. you can possibly imagine metal, paper, glass, plastic, rubber, foam, plaster, pneumatics, hydraulic, animatronics, neon glass blowing mold making, and injection molding, just to name a few.

And uh in nineteen ninety three Adam began concentrating his career on the special effects industry, which we talked quite a bit about, honing his skills through more than one hundred television commercials and a dozen feature films, including Star Wars Episode One, Episode Two. Galax and the Matrix sequels. A decade later Adam was chosen along with Jamie Heinemann to host Mythbusters, you may have heard of it, which premiered on Discovery Channel in two thousand three. Fourteen years, one thousand and fifteen myths.

Two thousand nine hundred and fifty experiments, eight Emmy nominations and eighty three miles of duct tape later. That version of the series ended in March 2016. Adam is never still for long. Today he hosts and executive produces Mythbusters Jr., as well as a brand new series, Savage Builds, which premieres on The Science Channel in June of 2019. That may have already happened, depending on when you listen to this. He also stars in and produces content for Tested.com, including behind the scenes dives into multiple blockbuster films, including Alien Covenant, Mortal Kombat, and Blade Runner. He also has launched Savage Industries. and has begun to manufacture his own bags along with mafia bags made in the US and constructed primarily from recycled sail cloth. Every bag is not only durable and lightweight, but unique as well.

And the current line, you can find it at Adamsavage.com. Includes two sizes of the EDC that is everyday carry and pouches with more on the way. Last but not least. This year, that is twenty nineteen, Adam wrote his first book. Which is fantastic. Every tool's a hammer. is the title and the description is quote A Chronicle of My Life as a Maker.

It's an exploration of making and my own productive obsessions. But it's also a permission slip of sorts from me to you. That's me, Adam to you. Permission to grab hold of the things you're interested in that fascinate you and to dive deeper into them to see where they lead you. End quote. You can find out all about it at Adamsavage Book.com And without further ado. Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with the ever entertaining

Adam Savage. And one last thing. If you want to see the video of this conversation, because he is highly, highly, highly, highly animated and uh he is is in his workshop, so you see little goodies that he's showing off, you can just go to youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferris, two Rs two S to check that out. So Et voilà! Adam, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Tim. It's so awesome to uh see you at least virtually on my screen. Yes, indeed. And there's gonna be no shortage of uh things to get into, and I thought we might start some people will be listening to this audio only, but I couldn't help but notice a piece of maybe not memorabilia because you probably made it yourself, but There is a no face. behind you in your workshop and for those who don't know It is from arguably my favorite film of all time, which is an animated film.

Miyazaki. Called Spirit It Away. And uh could you Please explain because I don't know why you have a no face behind you. Um so Spirited Away is also one of my favorite films of all time, without a qualifier that it's animated. Hayomiyazaki.

is one of the world's great treasures as a storyteller. And spurred it away as A mind blowing film. I love explaining to people that it's an entire universe that you only get The tiniest details about and yet you're clear it's a completely consistent universe.

And the film is about a little girl who loses her identity in the spirit world. uh and with the help of this strange uh uh needy spirit named Koniashi uh or uh no face Uh she uh gets her name back and is able to escape the spirit world and At one point.

in the mid nineties, I was at a Halloween party and I saw a really terrible rendition of No Face, but still seeing a No Face in person made me jump. And I thought I really want some of that. So once I started attending Comic Con really regularly, uh and thinking about putting on big costumes uh I made a no face costume. I think it was my third or fourth con. And It is I I have over seventy five costumes and some I mean, like the Kane the Kane space suit from Alien behind me. That took

uh fourteen years and cost me probably I probably ten thousand dollars of my own money invested in that suit and the commissions and the collaborations. No phase here cost me about seventy five bucks. I think the most expensive single item was arm length um matte satin gloves from the Lusty Lady drag queen store here on Mission Street. It's no longer around Um And even though it was the expensive costume and I put it together in about a day Uh the effect that it had

on people when I hit the floor at San Diego Comic Con. was shocking and not just shocking, like they were surprised, but I was also handing out gold coins to people from beneath my I had chocolate gold coins. So every time I took a photo, I'd hand one out to someone, and then someone's people started giving me back the gold coins. Angrily, I could feel them grab my hand, put the coin in, and it turned out Then of course it's no it's it's bad luck to take gold from no face in the film and this

It's like the expansion of my mind about what cosplay really was, that it is a form of theater where the audience and the performers are all one thing and we are all playing on a on a about a narrative that we love. Uh, and it just uh it started a lifelong fascination with what that process is, the process of putting on costumes, transformation, enjoying that transformation with others who are as weird and wonderful as you are and Uh, you know, it's there's no end to it. And no face was where

That first tick of consciousness about what it could be. I am so glad I asked. And I encourage everyone to try to see this film. I I remember searching desperately a few years ago. I didn't want to

find it on Pirate Bay or somewhere else. I really wanted to pay for it, but it was so difficult to find Miyazaki films digitally. I couldn't find it years ago. Yeah, they won't they still don't stream. Um, you have to buy physical DVDs. And this this is actually You know. I I've been recently getting into more Japanese anime, um and some of the really, you know, Satashi Ono and

Uh I'm not getting that name right, I'm sorry, but like there's some amazing filmmakers and so little of great Japanese animated cinema streams in the US. So I'm firing back up my old DVD drives for the for the laptop in order to be able to watch them. Yeah, everybody should check it out. It's uh The name in Japanese, which I think is Sento Chihiro, no Kami Kakushi, or something like that. And the the she loses her name but is given a new one which is one character in her full name, which is Chi Hiro. So Chi and Sen are pronounced the same way in Japanese. In any case, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too far, but I thought we could We could flashback

And tie this obsessive Tendency or tendencies really that you've harnessed for the greater good. Uh and certainly as a career All the way back to A suit of armor, at least that's how I would describe it, that you built I wanna say sophomore year.

In high school. Could you tell could you tell could you tell us about this? Yeah, the the suit of armor has its origins in nineteen eighty two of going to see which was the year Which is

Which was my sophomore year in high school. Uh nineteen eighty two John Borman's film Excalibur came out with An amazing cast of Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson. Uh and some wonderful British actors like Nigel Terry who played Arthur from the age of seventeen to the age of sixty five. Um, and I was blown away by this film. The armor in it is so beautiful. The knights wear their armor all the time, which was certainly something I wanted to do at th fourteen, fifteen years old.

Um, and I made I I made two suits of armor. inspired by that film in high school. The first one was in my sophomore year I made one out of cardboard replete with a white horse that I wore around me, like one of those silly horse costumes. Um and then uh made one out of roofing aluminum and pop rivets. And it's where I learned had it's my dad taught me all about pop rivets and we used about a thousand of them in this suit. And I wore it to class. Uh I felt amazing.

Uh and I immediately passed out of heat exhaustion in third period from the oven that I was wearing. And I woke up in the nurse's office And it like this is one of those moments in life where you feel like a screenwriter is writing it and maybe they're a little too on the nose. Because I woke up without the armor on. Because they they basically removed it from me'cause I'd passed out. And I woke up and went, Oh

Where's my armor? All right, I get the analogy of the armor being both physical and theoretical, but Jesus, we can tone it down just a little bit. Now you as I understand it. Uh Have your hands in a lot of

Divergent skills that then converged in interesting ways. In high school, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up? Um I thought I was gonna be an actor.

I was d uh the drama club was definitely my people. The theater group at h in high school were my people. It was where I found acceptance and camaraderie and collaboration and Uh and uh by the time I was fifteen when I was fifteen I wanted to take it seriously and I knew that my dad had worked in advertising in the sixties And so he reached out to an old friend of his, Charlie Kimbro. Charlie is famous for playing Jim Dial on Murphy Brown.

Um, and Charlie was one of my dad's oldest friends. And Charlie introduced me to his agent at ICM. Doris Mance and she took me on and started sending me out on commercials and I got the first commercial I auditioned for, which was to play Mr. Whipple's Stockboy in a Sharman commercial. And I thought, Oh, this is it. It's that easy. I went on an audition. I got a great job. Uh I then played um uh second lead in a Billy Joel music video and I did a few more commercials and stuff like that and I really thought that acting was going to be it. Um I even went to NYU for six months and studied acting at Tisch School for the Arts before realizing that

Um My peers in that program Вріли серіс абати крафт в актін. And I wanted to be an actor.

And there was a I I got very quickly that there was a fundamental difference between their drive to study the thing and my desire to be a thing. Um my desire wasn't a real desire. It was It was it it was more like a theater it was more like a theater flat of desire. There was nothing behind it. Um

So I ended up giving that up. I by nineteen I stopped going out auditions and I stopped taking it seriously and I started uh concentrating on what I was doing for work, which was to be a graphic designer and assistant animator, and I started doing a lot more working with my hands. Yeah. Yeah, I I had read That in your twenties You were

About being highly unspecialised. Um and you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so Feel free to to correct me.

But uh It reads and this I think is a transcript actually, but I actually spent an inordinate amount of my time in my twenties thinking that I was too unspecialized. Uh Could you comment on that and how You

Got to a point where you Didn't feel like that. Like you were too unspecialised or that that was a liability. Yeah, uh So my early

I lived in Manhattan from age eighteen to twenty three. Uh, from nineteen eighty five to nineteen ninety. And then I moved to San Francisco. And the move is really the turning point for me in that understanding of specialization. And the fact is I My my my closest friend still in New York uh

was telling me in naйті eйті six Your problem, he said, is that you have talent, but no ambition. Ha ha ha. Please. And he goes, Yeah, if you had ambition, you wouldn't be talking to me. You'd be saying, I'm sorry, Mr. George Lucas, I can't make that by Tuesday.

And He really was totally correct. He this was a guy who'd been born and raised in Manhattan, and the thing that I now understand is that Manhattan is an amazing city if you know what you want out of Manhattan. It is a place built on and for ambition. And the people who uh get their work out and get seen in Manhattan have busted their ass to do it because it's the singular focus in their life. And it means culturally it's a really important city because only the stuff that has been fought for gets to your attention.

Um and I think that many great cities are like that. Los Angeles is totally like that. Chicago Um and London, et cetera. You know the world's great cities are worlds where the culture is something the culture of those cities is a a competitive one. Um, but if you don't know what you want to do, a place like Manhattan is a very cold and weird place. It's not going to

open its doors to you and you're not going to You're not gonna be able to stumble into your ambition. And so after five years there of kind of trying several different careers and several different job paths and still like not having a singular focus. I moved to San Francisco, which is I think one of the great cities in the world for finding your ambition. Um, it means that some of the culture here is not as good.

It means that everyone, you know, if you want to have your artwork in a gallery, San Francisco You could do it within a few months. It's it it's not as hard to do it here as it is in a place like Los Angeles or New York. Um, and I think that has its good points and its bad points. Again, like I said, I think some of the culture here, some of the stuff you go out to see at that isn't necessarily as Rigorous as it Might be in

In a city like LA or New York. But at the same time, it w it saved me because I was a I was able to s call myself a sculptor and have my work in like 40 group shows in the first two years I was in San Francisco. I got huge amounts of feedback from people about what that work meant to them, and it gave me perspective and what it meant to me. And it slowly allowed me to sort of build an ethos of of of what I wanted to do with my hands and my life. And when I ended up stumbling from the theater industry into the film industry. I film and commercial television uh special effects was where I all of a sudden saw that everything I'd been doing was leading towards this. Like

This was an industry in which All of my excitement and creativity and passion uh and drive could be pointed in a singular direction. And so I was like oh I'm gonna give everything over to this. Did you notice that in a f in a moment, in a flash, or did it take a while to see sort of like the end of the usual suspects or the red doorknob at the end of the sixth sense or whatever? Did it take a while to realize that it was that, or did you

Did you recognize it immediately? No, I so it It happened like this. I got I So I was working in theater for several years, Eureka Theater, Berkeley Rev, Beach Blanket Babylon. And uh I started getting reputation for solving problems. And that got the attention of Jamie Heinemann, who was running a shop at Colossal Pictures.

And he brought me in. We had a great interview and I ended up working for Jamie Uh On and off full time for about four or five years. Just before I was working for Jamie, I was working at Berkeley Repertor Theater and I was working at Beach Blanket Babylon.

And so I was basically putting in an eight hour day during the day. I was then doing three hours of a show every night, and I was still staying all night long. making sculpture in my studio in Hunters Point. So I was like never sleeping. I was just a one man building machine. And when I started working for Jamie full time I noticed after about a year

That I was no longer staying up all night building stuff. And I thought Huh. And then I thought I think this is specifically because this work is satisfying

all of that creative problem solving that I get in my studio. And then I went further and thought, Oh, this is why so many people in film and special effects say things like, I used to be an artist. And I resolved at that moment. Айдес, ай гес. Work

For commerce is satisfy the emotional and uh aesthetic need I have to explore This type of problem solving I was exploring in my art and now I can point all of that in towards this career. And I am steadfastly never going to say I used to be an artist because it is the same mechanism.

I recognized it. And I still do stuff for myself that's weird and sculptural and different. I still uh apply that aesthetic, and I didn't think I think most importantly, I didn't consider it a loss. of a purity. Um

to take that energy and point it towards something that had to do with commerce because I also saw that the commerce was feeding me, that the that this was a thing I could call a career and hell spells if it gave me the same kind of output thrill is making art. Sc screw it. Let's totally go towards this and see where it leads. Are there skills? In this this I have

One answer for myself in mind. Um I'm not asking you to parrot it, but uh are there skills that you developed along the way That have ended up being very important to the success. of Adam now and the background in theater, for instance. Uh

Seems like it might be one of those force multipliers for a lot of what you've to do. Are there any other kinda overlaid skills kinda like Warren Buffett in public speaking, right? He feels like public speaking just makes you

In many cases unique or better at everything else. And so you don't have to be necessarily like Michael Jordan, top one percent of one percent of one percent. You could be top ten percent in three things that are very rarely combined. Uh and I'm just curious if if any Any other skills or Attributes.

Come to mind. Yeah, I mean well there's a there's a a a family story in my family that um in the in the mid sixties my dad partnered up with a uh a producer in New York and they formed a consortium. And my dad's partner would be the business side and my dad would be the creative side.

And at the time his partner had more experience in the advertising industry and he said We're gonna make a big splash about forming this consortium. We're gonna put ads out. We're gonna get articles in millimeter and all these other trade magazines. And uh gotta tell you, if you start to believe in your own bullshit, I'm gonna cut you loose. So there was always a family ethos about not believing your own bullshit and It's a necessary family ethos because my family because because the men in my family can tend to be very full of shit. Myself included. Um so

watching the watcher and watching out for that drinking your own Kool Aid is definitely an ego I grew I was raised with. Um You're right. Theater is a force multiplier for its camaraderie. It's low threshold to entry. In fact, I think theater as an art has the lowest threshold to entry because if there is an apocalypse and there are fourteen people left in San Francisco and they find each other and make a campfire

Theater is the first art form that they will explore together. They will start telling stories and then they will start performing those stories because we as humans, we need narratives to help us make sense of the world. So I love theater. I have an abiding passion for it. And it was where When I was working in theater and I saw something I didn't know about, I could go, Hey, what about that? And someone would make the opportunity for me, Oh, well, I'll show you how I do that. So I

For me You know, I w as soon as I got into film, it doubled my income because unfortunately the pay in theater is still really crappy. Um So I didn't look back from film. Um but the experiences that I had in theater of the camaraderie, of the uh learning everything that I could get my hands on

And of that low threshold to entry really have informed most of the rest of what I've done. Uh you know, but uh all that being said, there's a quote in Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up, when someone says to him, You will eventually use everything you've ever learned. And it's so true because that early acting training I had Made me

way more fearless about being in front of people and being myself and being out there. uh than I would have otherwise been. And I think, you know, like you were saying about Warren Buffett in public speaking, that ability to Perform. Is It's the A it's part it's one of the biggest A's in steam.

If you want someone to understand your scientific proof, you have to explain it, and explaining it is an art form. It is Mm-hmm. It is the art of getting your argument across. And nobody can do that in a vacuum. And so one of the things I thought was most amazing when Mythbusters showed up is I was like, Oh. Look at that. The performer sat dormant for fifteen years and while the maker was ascendant, and then all of a sudden this opportunity showed up and the performer and the maker get to meet on the same plane. Yeah, it's it's really It's been fun it's been a lot of fun to watch your career. I want a second Born Standing Up. That is an incredible

memoir. I listened to it actually while I lived in San Francisco. I walked the streets of San Francisco listening to the audiobook. Just a fantastic, fantastic story. Thing about the audiobook that I was sad about because we I read it. And then on a big road trip I read it out loud to my wife. She read it out loud to me. Uh, and then we got the audiobook and we listened to Steve Martin read it, and the only problem I had with the audiobook was that Steve Martin didn't fully commit to his recapitulation of his own comedy bit. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That would have that would have been the the icing on the cake. I which I get.

Totally get and I don't begrudge that he must have had a very real and about a reasonable reason. I just I I the the I grew up on his stand up comedy and I wanted to hear it again. So I I want to revisit Two thousand eight. And I I mentioned two thousand eight because I think it might have been the first time We ever

bumped into each other very briefly in person. I want to say it could have been, and this was at the entertainment gathering, the E. G. And it was Uh certainly for me up to that point. My highest pressure, if you want to call it that, public speaking engagement. I was very, very nervous.

And for those who don't know, the E G I think the Uh an easy way to describe it would be a smaller Ted. created by the same person who created Ted, Richard Saul Werman is is a very funny guy. Uh and it was, I wanna say at the time What would you say, five hundred attendees? Something like that. And

I remember. Yeah. It is very intimate. Yeah, it was very small. And I remember Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I want to say

That You gave a presentation That involved the Maltese Falcon. Oh that was that year, yes it was. And uh And what struck me

Aside from the fact that it was a f a fantastic presentation What what struck me was that you st I don't know if you remember this, you started You went for about thirty seconds. And then kind of like Adele when she did this tribute song. For George Michael not too long ago, you stopped.

And said Nope. I wanna start that over. And then you start it over. And you just nailed it. I mean the word per minute rate was so outrageous. It was clear that you really had

planned and rehearsed and prepped for this, but I had never seen someone Call it audible like that. And start over. And I was so impressed because I remember thinking, if I fuck up my talk, I will not have the confidence to do that. Uh w was was that the first time that you'd done that? And

How do you think about uh or how do you prepare for Public speaking like that. That's a great question,'cause there's many, many layers to this. Um, first of all That talk

started its life as a ten minute throwaway talk I did at IDEO at one of their evenings they called quickies. Uh they parade a bunch of people and each one does a quick rapid fire talk and I thought, Oh, let me talk something about something that's weird and personal and I'll talk about How much time I spent on the Maltese Falcon. And I came off I was followed by the world yo yo champion who just blew the whole house away. It was a lovely

Fun evening. Um And Coming off the stage, I ran into Kevin Kelly, who said That's a really good talk. Kevin Kelly, uh the founder of Wired, uh cool tools.

Kevin is the one of the forest gumps of the internet, along with Stuart Brand and Kevin said that was a lovely talk. And I was like, Thank you, Kevin, and he said I think you should workshop that. And I said, I have no idea what that means. And he said I think you should continue to give that talk and keep refining it because I think there's a really great talk inside of it. And about

A month later, uh, my wife and my kids and I were in uh Nashville Airport waiting to change planes, and we ran into this other f nuclear family. Um uh John and John Ennis and Arlene Clott and their kids. And Arlene and Beth Lissick run Porchlight, as they have for the past twenty years in San Francisco. And and we started conversing and w we've since become friends. We've been friends uh forever now. Uh but she said, I'm about to do this talk I'm about to do a porchlight on obsession. Are you interested in giving a talk? And I was like Fascinatingly, I have a talk that I'm working on about obsession. So I went to Cafe Denard And I gave a version of the Maltese Falcon talk.

At the old Cafe de Nord, where the audience is sitting all at your knees and you're right in front of them and among them. And it was one of those electric nights where Uh it was Everything fired on all cylinders and I thought I've got a really extra extra special talk here. I'm really I can't wait to To give it again. And that's when the that was the second year I had been to EG, I think. Maybe even the third year. At any rate.

In going to EG and having workshop this talk I decided that I wanted to rehearse it really, really precisely. Um and Part of the part of that meant that I wanted to tell the story with a lot of imagery. I wanted it to feel coffinous because That's the way my obsessions feel in my brain.

I wanted the the talk to feel kind of like a river moving past you. So I think I have something like a hundred and twenty slides in thirteen minutes. Um and The the rhythm is really important. I think in the very beginning of that talk I gave this I say uh a uh a Cache or cache of dodo bones was found.

And that naturally happened the first time I was rehearsing a talk, and then I thought I'm building that in because I think I can make it sound honest and true. I think I can act that moment. And so this was the first time I had taken a talk And turned it into a bit of theater. And so when I was up there and I was rolling through the slides, because if you remember the first one was taking a bunch of shots of Google Earth and zooming in on the island of Mauritius off the east coast of Madagascar. And

That rhythm between the words and the imagery It was music, and I could tell. In that first pass. That I was out of step and Because and I was trying little things to get back in step and they weren't working and I thought, you know what, I'm in my head. I'm doing this for two audiences. I'm doing this for the audience here, but I know they're recording this and I want the recording to be good. So screw it.

Uh no, I'm not gonna get in trouble. For asking to start again. And in fact I may even bring the crowd more with me. It's this is a net plus. Um And that comes from, you know.

Uh the more you do public speaking, the more you encounter the fact that each audience has a kind of a character to it. And s uh some are difficult, some are easy. Some of the difficult ones can be your best audiences. Uh if you when you find that rhythm. And the E G audience Like the Ted audience is a heady

An intense crowd to perform for. I mean years later I did a uh about four years ago I did a juggling uh uh talk for the EG and Michael Hawley, who runs it, neglected to tell me that all of the flying Karomansov brothers would be in the audience when I was doing my juggling. And I got heckled by the Karomansov brothers. Um But

All this is by way of saying I do I give talks in many different ways. Whenever when I I t talk every year at the San Mateo Maker Fair, and when I do that talk I do very little rehearsal for it. I want it to feel and be raw and off the cuff because I feel that I owe that to my fellow makers. I want them to see that it is not all polish and perfection. Uh, and I want to be a little vulnerable with them. But when I spoke at Ted in Vancouver Four years ago.

I rehearsed that talk. So many times I forgot it. And then on stage it came to me as a as if a fresh thing, but a funny thing happened. On that Ted on the Ted stage when I was doing the talk about cosplay. Which was About a minute in

I thought to myself Fuck, I'm ahead of myself. I'm thinking a little too far ahead. And consequently I am not taking the spaces with the with the words and the concepts in this moment because I'm running this the the forward track a little too farther forward.

And then I thought You're always this far ahead in the first minute. Relax, it'll be fine. So you have the watcher, you have the speaker, you have the watcher watching the watcher, and then you have the watcher watching the watcher. That's r that's really remarkable.

It's um I I love the exercise. I love the exercise of interacting with a crowd. I love the laugh that come where you don't expect Um I love Well, I particularly love the gasp. When you can create a piece where the audience goes Uh I've only done it a few times. Um as David Mammoth points out, you can easily blackmail an audience into a standing ovation. It is impossible to blackmail them into a gasp. And thus

Gasp as as far as I'm concerned, the highest possible achievement you can you can attain on stage. So so let's let's talk about Work sh work shopping. Uh well actually this this goes far beyond workshopping Uh

Could you talk to the origin of the phrase failure is always an option, please? Uh so that grew out of a joke on set. Um, it was the first season of Mythbusters. We were

I think we were trying to make biscuit dough explode inside a hot car. Um and this was This was uh the first season, we had no it we had no infrastructure. We didn't know what we were doing. Jamie and I were still brand new to building scientific methods and thinking through worst case scenarios. It didn't occur to us that even with ten space heaters, it would be really hard to get the temperature inside a car above a hundred degrees. Um It took hours and hours and hours and we're sitting there and it is so boring. And we're also

realizing that like are we getting enough on camera and I turned to the camera and I just said remember kids failure is always an option. 'Cause I was thinking my sense of humor runs what is the opposite of the right thing to say? Like To me, the worst possible thing you could say is sort of like a stress reliever just to imagine in my head. I don't then say it. But sometimes when I find a joke where you say the opposite of what you should say

It pleases me, and failure is always an option was That's the wrong thing to say in that moment. And they cut it into show and it became a kind of a catchphrase. And then I realized once people started saying it back to me.

But There's a deep scientific truth about it. That The idea of success Or failure

to a certain extent is anathema to scientific exploration. And when I say scientific, I d the qualifier, it's exploration. of any kind. And when you want to explore anything in a rigorous way, you're doing it using the scientific method, just by default. You're comparing the results to previous things, you're building the future experiments based on the things you've learned in the past. Um And

You know, in film we have the mad scientist go Damn it, my experiment was a failure. And a scientist doesn't say that. A scientist said I screwed up my methodology. I don't have enough results or Wow, the outcome was totally not what I expected. And to be honest, that's usually why

the fictional villain is upset because the results are the opposite of what they wanted. But a real scientist who comes up with the results that they're the opposite of what they thought is the most thrilled human being you've ever met. They are ecstatic that their expectations and their biases have been uh turned on their heads, and they have now this brand new, much wider understanding of what's going on. And that might be called failure by a neophyte who doesn't understand the scientific method, but to a scientist, that's opening up the whole world. Do you have any Favorite. Failures.

that come to mind. And that could be a failure that set you up for something you later considered a success. Uh Uh does not have to be Myth Buster specific. Could be from any point, but any any f any failures that in retrospect ended up being very, very helpful. Well so In fact I had

forgotten until you reminded me just now that at that E. G talk I stopped and restarted. Um, and I I that is an a huge example That was the first time I'd ever done something like that on stage, and I realized now that it was inspired by a singer who I love named Jane Sibury. And Jane Sibury uh famously did a beautiful duet with Katie Lang called Calling All Angels that was part of the Until the End of the World soundtrack way back when

Um and she's an incredible singer, has written many of my favorite songs and Uh back in the nineties I used to see her perform whenever she came through San Francisco, and I saw her with a jazz ensemble. at one point and She started a song. And ten bars in was like, Stop, everyone stop. We didn't get that one right. Let's go back to the top.

And I thought what Mm. Glorious balls to do that on stage. Like and again, it brought the audience closer to her to do that. And I loved that and I'm sure that I was thinking of that at that moment. I was like, I'm gonna do what I saw that I thought was courageous. I'm gonna do that thing. That's not necessarily a failure. uh in the in the traditional sense. And I think the distinction is important because we talk a lot, I'm sure

I know that in the in the lingua franca of of Uh uh self-improvement and making your output as impactful as you can. We talk a lot about helping kids to fail, helping them learn to fail. uh in Silicon Valley build fast and break things. Um But we don't mean failure.

We actually are lying. It's a great word, it catches your attention, which is important, but it's not what we really mean. And I like to point out that real failure is getting drunk and missing your kids' birthday party. That That's failing at what you should be doing. What we really mean when we say failure is we mean iteration. We mean the creative process is messy and it's iterative and you have to go you have to chase up a lot of wrong branches in order to get to the right one. And you're never gonna end up where you think you're gonna end up.

And while some people may think that that's a failure, a true creator knows that you follow the thing to where it's going, not to where you think it ought to go. Um so you know I I I have a couple of jobs I did where I took them on without the correct amount of experience or foresight and I screwed them up. I I've done jobs so poorly I lost friends. I've done jobs so so badly I didn't sleep for sixty hours.

uh and, you know, delivered something that was way not what the client wanted. And I still feel Um shame and sadness over those moments. Mm. But the fact that I got through those and the fact that I was able to see past them and learn from them.

I I remember at one point the one that the job that I did that I lost a friend on Um when she told me You couldn't have done anything more to make it clear that I should not be friends with you. That's how she put it. And I like called my dad. I was n I was nineteen, I was like weeping into the phone and he said, Look

You can't change what happened. You can't you can't fix that. Um the only thing you can do And you can't even tell her about this. You can take in what you did. You can absorb it. Realize what mechanism in you led to that screw up. And resolve to not do that again.

And that is what it that's what being a human is about. It's about noticing those things and trying not to do them again. You think about it strikes me that you think about your own thinking. A fair amount. Uh

Which I I f I think is worth digging into a little bit. Yeah. By way of Looking at

Influences. Uh And I've I'd read that you were, I think in your own words, radicalized by Noam Chomsky in your late in your late teens. Could you speak to that and then also any other authors or thinkers, philosophers Anyone who has

helped sh shape Your thinking or impact you. Oh my God, there's so many. I mean, you know. Uh starting off by reading all of Harlan Ellison's weird and complicated

semi misogynist canon back in my late teens Uh to Kurt Vonnegut, who showed me that you could have rigor and deep affection and love all at the same time. Um, to Richard Feynman.

Who showed that. You know, you can be you there are it is genuinely possible for there to be brilliant polymaths in the world who can explore many disciplines and be at the top of their field at any of them. Um I you know All of that comes into play, uh

Chomsky is amazing for It's funny because I'm thinking a lot about Chomsky now. Um there are two current schools of political thought About our current situation. Um, and especially as uh somebody who vehemently disagrees with everything that GOP is currently doing.

Um These two schools of thought are important distinctions. One is that Trump is an aberration and all we need to do is win in 2020, and we can erase that aberration and get back to the status quo. The other is that Trump is a symbol or a measure of just how screwed up our culture really, really is. And that we're going to need to open up and take a look at those parts of our culture that we might not want to notice and understand how each of us is complicit in that and really work towards building a society that we all want to live in. Those two distinctions are really important. And understanding my clarity for me is that I think that Trump is a symbol of what's wrong of a significant amount of what's wrong with America. And

In Chomsky is coming back into this. You know, as I've been very upset about Trump, I get very upset about how the New York Times covers them because I feel so much both sides of them in the New York Times. And I read the New York Times and I feel like It's the pot of boiling water and I'm the frog. And then I think back to Noam Chomsky and he's been telling me the New York Times supports the status quo and the power structure since nineteen eighty four. Like that's when I read my first Noam Chomsky pamphlet. Um

And It is about that we are asking these questions culturally. And you may have just you know Whoever's listening to this may disagree with me politically, and that's totally fine. I'm assuming that if we're all good actors acting in good faith, we're simply trying to make the world a better place for our kids and our friends and our family. Uh, as long as you know you're with me on that, I'm happy to disagree with you about the methods we use. Um

But asking those cultural questions is about being part of a culture and trying to help define it so you can be a better part of it all at the same time. And it goes back to what you were saying, that watching the watcher, which is a very Buddhist That you know, Dharma is full of exhortations to be able to meta shift yourself so you see above the plane of what's going on. I I remember at one point speaking of watching the washer. I remember at one point having an argument

With uh partner of mine at the time. And we were was one of those arguments where you both feel super vulnerable, but no one wants to give and you attack. We both attack. And I thought to myself

Ugh I have no idea what to do with this situation. Neither of us wants to budge. How do we get out of this? And then I thought, okay. Let's say I was writing this scene as a screenplay. Hay.

This is again it's a ship, right? I'm watching the watch run. I thought If I'm writing a screenplay and I'm writing my character, how does the audience feel about my character? Oh, they don't like him. I lost the audience. The last thing I said was shitty. And because I was looking to attack the audience can see that, they can see my vulnerability and my venality, and they no longer are with me.

And then I thought If I was rewriting this scene, how would I bring the audience back to my character's side? And I realized oh By being vulnerable and telling the truth. And so I kind of wrote the scene in my head as I said it, which was

I am really sorry for the thing that I just said. I am not upset with you. I am angry and vulnerable but X, Y, and Z and it's coming out as this, and I am really sorry. And I said all of that also without expecting a specific response. I said it cleanly and for the reasons it should be said, but I didn't get to it without making that meta shift. Did you develop

This Watching the watcher habit. Uh organically, did that come from parents? Did it come from books? That that meta level of self awareness. Yeah, where where would you Where would you say that's that's come from, if if anywhere comes to mind? I'm really not sure. I know that I was reading a lot of

Yeah. In my late teens I was also reading a lot of Carlos Castaneda and a lot of And a lot of Rom Dots? Yeah. And Ramdos talks about that a lot. And I I do remember Um

I do remember being with a girlfriend Or eighty six. And She was upset and I couldn't figure out why.

Like I I I yeah. And so I thought to myself I remember distinctly trying this thought experiment once. Oh what is the world what what if I could see the what if I could see this scene through her eyes? And so I literally thought of her head as a machine that I could climb in and look out through the eyes. And when I did, I saw a color. Like

I saw a color and the color helped inform me where she was mentally. Yeah. You asked me what I think that what was going on there. I think I was using the analogy of color to help tap into my own intuition that my emotion wasn't Letting me tap into I think that I built a framework.

W I think that's frankly what if if if if you know, if you're someone listening to this and you go to see a psychic and they help you, I'm quite sure that what that psychic is doing is using the cards that are in front of them, but mostly you being in front of them to kind of tap past an emotional response to an intuition about what's going on. That's that's you know, we do that to our partners and our friends all the time. Uh in terms of giving them perspective that exercise

really early on in my romantic life gave me A sense that There were other vantage points from which to view something rather than through your own angry eyes in the middle of the melee. S let's uh you're very a well spoken guy. I think that

your abilities and the the breadth and depth of your abilities can be intimidating to a lot of people and I'm sort of speaking in the royal we here because uh I I find it a little intimidating. Uh So I want to ask a So I want to dig into it because you I would have already mentioned this in the intro, we're gonna talk more about it, but you you have a you have a book, Every Tool's a Hammer.

And I'm super excited about it. Uh in part because I have this Mm. Closet dream of being A maker. Now specifically

A maker with my hands, right? So not necessarily a keyboard, but really making things and Uh I have Had this this fantasy and this dream for a very long time. I've been to maker fairs in the Bay Area.

And kinda wandered around sheepishly looking sideways at various things, but not engaging too closely. Uh I even long ago uh went through the uh I guess Up a number of areas in the in the Myth Busters. Uh workshops with with Jamie and I this has been with me a long time. But at At at the c at my current state I would consider myself a manual illiterate.

Um I've never really built anything. And so I'd be really curious to know If there are any particular projects you would suggest for kind of remedial maker 101 or for for people like me who know there's something there. Who really desperately believe that

using the hands kind of unlocks a certain uh humanness that uh that that they don't have access to, where where might you suggest they start? Um So number one, I I don't necessarily think that the secret is always in using your hands. I really I'm really careful that I define making as any time you are creating something from nothing, even if it's a poem in your head.

Um, every time we reach out mentally, physically, to create something that is generated from us. We are participating in our culture and we're adding to it. Um, and I want everyone to have that experience. But you asked Specifically about uh the physical making of stuff.

Um I do. I I do have a project I think is a great gateway project to making and it is To build an architectural model of the living space you have, your house or your

This is something that is not difficult. to understand and to parse and it's not difficult to do a really good job at it. You can look at your room that you're in. It's got four walls that At least uh And this wall, let's say, has a window in it, the wall behind you has a door in it. Those measurements are noble measurements. You can build a one twelfth scale model of that room simply by taking the inch number

And making it a f and taking the foot number and making it an inch. There you've done scaling. You've cut a piece of cardboard out where the door is the right distance in inches as it is in feet from the wall, and then you assemble these four things together and holy hell, now you're looking at an architectural model of your room, and it's five pieces of cardboard. Uh, and you can go out from there. I've built architectural models of all of my living spaces. Because it helps me put them into my head.

And thus it helps me put them into my body. Uh I love understanding things. From those different vantage points. Um what do you get out of putting could putting it into your body? Could you explain that for a second?

Well Um Or what does that mean? So at the beginning Like let's say w after our podcast you start making an architectural model of the house.

Um, the mental process you're gonna go through is gonna be one of a constant gear switching from the macro to the micro. You'll be, okay, uh that wall is gonna come to this and that measurement comes to this and and it'll be this kind of constant back and forth. Um, for me uh after all the years of experience I have, it's a very different mental process. I look around and I see the wall as a set of like

I'm instantly s translating it as a set of actions from the real thing to the to the smaller thing. Um and so There comes a point In the making of things.

uh in which the discipline you've chosen gets past that gear switching mode and goes towards an almost entirely mental mode. Where Uh I can build I build something in my head first, and then what I do with my hands is just cutting the chunks I see in here.

Um It takes practice that you know, most of so like most of what happens when I'm collaborating With another builder is I'm taking my mental picture and attempting to grid it onto the one that they have. And it's best if we're doing that with pen and paper or with models in front of us, but Frankly, you know, much of my building, like I said, happens in in my head.

Um the other the other thing that I would say, so I love the idea of building an architectural model as a as an exercise. Actually, when I did my first Makerbox, that was the first project. I I gave people a blueprint of my shop. And Thousands of people built architectural models in corrugated cardboard of my shop. And I love that, and many of them went on to build models of their house. That's a great exercise for sort of the gateway drug to getting you

with the low threshold of materials, low threshold of cost, low threshold of skill, um High high uh uh High probability of quality output. 'Cause we're just cut in squares, and there's nothing complicated about it. The other intersection that I suggest is

To find something that you have to have. Не ам шо. in the explorations you do around the world that you go to someone's house and they show you the Japanese sword they have, or you go somewhere sit in a chair and you're like, Holy hell, this is the greatest chair I've ever sat in, or you see a cup that is like, Oh, I love this cup and you want one. Um When you find something like that

That you can't not think about. That's the thing to maybe try and make. because you want something out of the process. I've never learned any of the skills I had The skills that I have are myriad, but I've never learned any of them in a vacuum just because I wanted to learn a skill. I learn them in service of achieving

something that I desire, whether it's a Z F one from the fifth element or a no face costume. That you had to make yourself. Is there is there anything that that jumps to mind?

Mm. Adam ha has run off camera to grab an item. So So last year for my I I I'm friends with the guys at Weta workshop, Peter Jackson and uh Richard Taylor. Uh many of the amazing craftspeople at Weta have become really close friends of mine, and I love And I love Lord of the Rings. I love all the output that those guys do. And last year

For my uh fiftieth birthday, Richard Taylor gave me uh Boromir's sword from Lord of the Rings. Amazing. One of the most beautiful objects I've ever seen. This is hand built by Weta's Swordmaster Peter Lyon.

Who built all the sorts for Lord of the Rings. It's an incredible blade, and this is a full uh full tank battle ready piece of spring steel. That is razor sharp. It's a masterpiece. And as soon as I had it, I knew

I've got to build a scabbard for this. Yeah. And then I built Four or five scabbards for other swords of mine in preparation for the

I wanted the this one to be Beautiful. And Uh This is the scabbard I made for Boromir's sword. It is leather and it's steel and I use techniques I had never tried before.

Uh and it is a suitable Із а сутал хаус. For one of my favorite objects. Yeah, and I absolutely like not only did I have to do this, but for the first time, I did a lot of practicing before I built the hero one that I wanted to And by the way, this is simply version one point oh. This is close by in my workshop because I'm just about to strip it all down and make it even more correct. For the building of a scale home with cardboard and so on, what are the the materials necessary? And if this can easily be found somewhere, you can tell tell us where to find it, but what what tools does one need?

Um well so let me I'll s explain the process first of all as I do it, which is Um, in general, most of us live in houses of a consistent ceiling height. Uh the ceilings in your house look like they're maybe nine feet. So if you were building a one twelfth scale model, that would be nine inches. Um if twenty fourth scale, it would be four and a half inches, right? Half of that.

Um, so w the way I start any architectural model is I figure out my ceiling height and then I cut out a bunch of strips of corrugated cardboard at that exact height. Now I've got my walls. They're all overly long. So I take a piece of cardboard that will be the base and I draw out the floor plan in scale. That only takes a right angle ruler and a pencil. Uh once I have that.

Now I have a measuring device for these long strips of cardboard that are the correct height. So I measure all all four walls. Now I have four walls of The correct height and correct width. Now I start to just measure where the windows and the details go. Uh all of this takes A ruler with an edge you can cut against, an exacto blade, a hot glue gun, and a few Amazon boxes. And that's it.

Oh, it depends. You know, this makes me think of uh a documentary I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher the title. If you haven't seen it, I think you would love it. It's called I want to say the Art of Seeing. And it's a BBC documentary. You can find it for the time being on YouTube and it is Uh

About and features the artist David Hockney. And yeah. And he's amazing. And hilarious and brilliant and very good at explaining his own thought processes, which which I admire. But uh Yeah. Yeah.

The the reason he pops to mind is that at one point I want to say And I'm gonna butcher this as a yank, but the the Royal Academy something something such, some very famous gallery, offered him the entire space for not a retrospective, but his new work, which happened at the time to be landscape art. And he created an entire scale model of this multi room gallery so that he could tilt it and look through different doorways to see how His various pieces of artwork, which he had also replicated to scale, would appear through different walkways and entrances.

And it was Oh when I first glanced at it because I didn't have any of the explanation, it seemed like Potentially a huge waste of time, but as soon as he started demonstrating the utility It was uh

So genius. And also Uh the the miniature artwork seemed actually quite difficult to pull off, but aside from that, reasonably straightforward exercise that later in at full scale in the facility made such a huge difference to the experience of everyone who walked through. Uh it's um That that is all to say I I'm excited about

Trying out this project. I I'll give another example. I was just in LA for the upfronts uh and I stopped by a friend's uh production uh office'cause a friend of mine is filming a a big feature film right now. And they had They have this gigantic set they're gonna build. For the finale of this film.

It's it's huge, it has all these different parts, and it's not just a set where the final action of the film happens, it's also a set that has to fit with what the script Is saying So there's a part where one of the characters uh comes into the set and hides somewhere. So what they did was they built a scale model of the exact extent of the sound stage they'll be building the set on.

And then they have these things like rocks and stairs and architectural details. And they're placing them Within that set But also asking okay, in this scene, if they're hiding behind here, can we can we get over here so we can see that they don't have the eye line. then then we'll build the set with this part that moves and that part that doesn't. Like it becomes a critical problem solving tool in bridging and this is bridging between the art department, the construction department, and also how the narrative actually pieces together and what the audience will see and how the whole last part of the film plays out.

And huge chunks of this have to be in the right place, otherwise the story won't get told correctly. So in the spirit of Uh maybe low tech or at least low barrier to entry maker projects. I have I've read again in my internet research That

Uh you are Good at making eggs. I don't know if this is true. And in in a lot of respects I learned to cook by testing All sorts of things on eggs. Uh it's I would love to hear

how you think about making eggs or really any aspect of eggs that you find interesting. Y X. Eggs are eggs are tough. Exert. Eggs are unforgiving.

Um Eggs Eggs like chicken. Have a wide range of being edible, but a short range of being delicious. That's very true.

And a lot of cooks and chefs that I know say that eggs are one of the hardest things to get right. Um I have always loved eggs. I've always loved scrambled eggs. I tend to not like omelets'cause I think in the US omelets are too full of shit. Yeah. Literally.

Um And then I guess about fifteen years ago I came across this Gordon Ramsey video on YouTube where he talked about doing a slow cook scramble. Um, and he literally, it's it's a very weird scramble. You crack the eggs in whole, you're stirring them constantly over a medium heat with a bunch of butter. Um, and as soon as they start to congeal, you pull them off the heat, you stir them like a risotto, you never stop stirring. But the temperature control and uh attunement is all about not letting them ever congeal too much.

And I was like, Oh, I gotta try this and I tried it and It kind of worked the first time and I just I've been doing it ever since. And there's this amazing Moment I found

So first of all But when you Talk to cooks, they'll say, Oh yeah, yeah, the slow cook Temperature adjusted scramble is Just

Uh Objectively the best way to make eggs. It's literally like they come out like this sweet custard. And it's There's nothing else quite like it. And it's really hard to do right in a restaurant where you don't have fifteen minutes of concentrated time for everyone's entree. So restaurants have all these really wonderful techniques for for for doing that. And Ramsey was saying he makes new chefs cook him eggs.

In order to to guess their chops. And I have discovered so much about myself and about the process of of what makes food textural and what you know, uh what I want out of them by adjusting that recipe over the years. So now I make my eggs the same way. Um, I tend to let them get a little bit more congealed at the very end. So I have some like tooth to some of the eggs. Cause I've found over the years that I don't love it when they're all custody and soft. Yeah.

But there's this great moment that happens when you're doing the stirring. When The eggs When the heat helps the whites and the yolks fully emulsify. And this is before you've added salt or anything else. You just have butter in there, so you have some residual salt. But um

Where the where the emulsification happens, I feel like it's because of the heat, when all of a sudden this sweet smell rises out of the pan. And it's the moment I know like, Oh cool, I'm on the home stretch. Now I got it. And Gordon didn't talk about that. That was like my own exploration, but every time it happens because It happened to me spontaneously. It's part of my love affair with eggs, is getting that Moment out of that.

Um and actually I mean we didn't start in two thousand sixteen after the after the most recent president was elected into office. We started just having brunches every Sunday and having friends come over because we just needed to be around a lot of people we loved on a very regular basis. And I made those scrambled eggs for everywhere from five to twenty five people. Every Sunday. Uh I make big batches, small batches

Uh and you know, sometimes I'd add in scallions or cheese or a little pepper or something like that. Um, but uh it be it I have now cooked that dish Thousands and thousands of times. I love it. Scallions are very underrated. And uh

the f texturally, so I love eggs. And you can also learn so many fantastic principles and techniques related to cooking. From eggs as a somewhat Neutral. palette, if that makes any sense at all. Uh highly recommend people play with uh s

slivered almonds right at the end, just when you're getting ready to eat the eggs. Yep. Uh fantastic. You don't have to put them in too early or they'll get uh soggy and brittle. But if they have that crispness, I remember a French uh chef told me at one point, and and I don't know if this is in French, but he said You wanna take the eggs off the heat while they're still a little snotty. And that stuck with me and it's like yeah, you want like a mild snot consistency when you take it off. And uh because you'll have the carryover cooking and so on. But huge fan of Uh of eggs.

On the flip side of that, there's a there's a great cookbook, you probably have it in your collection, Jacques and Julia. Jacques Papin and it's Jacques Papin is like the Jedi Master. Uh, watching him feebbone a chicken in two minutes and telling you afterwards that he went slowly because they were filming it. Yeah, his his manual skill, I mean when I was writing my third book, which involved a lot of cooking I I was prepared to dislike him for a few reasons. Number one, he had a fancy, to me, sounding French name. Number two, he was extremely well known. So I was like, how good could he really be if he's sort of f like French food for export? Like how how technical could he really be?

And his videos are just Incredible. You watch him make a French omelet on high heat or any of these things, his knife skills alone. I I did a pan flip once. I am not willing to try it again. Yeah. Yeah. Actually I do when I do flip my omelets, my friends point out that actually As I'm doing the flip, I'm using the spatula and the pen and my friends point out my whole body goes up to like I the whole everything waits like I'm in throat.

But Jacques Papin and Julia Child both have the same way of finishing scrambled eggs. He does them fast over high heat, she does them slow over a medium heat. Um but they both Take a uh half of a beaten egg and pour it over the scrambled eggs just as they're pulling it off the heat.

And then they stir it up and you end up getting this lovely sort of a little bit of extra wet. On top of the scrambled eggs. You can also use um Uh I think MacAvoy is the name of the olive oil that's in your neck of the woods in Northern California. You can use a finishing olive oil too. Right in the last like sixty seconds and stir that in and you get a nice texture to it as well. Uh I love eggs, so I appreciate you indulging the egg question. Uh

You know what what I'd love to ask if you're open to it, because One of the risks in doing this podcast and speaking with people who are well known for being very good at what they do is that people who may be struggling or h who have struggled in different ways may feel like everyone else is stepping up to bat and hitting home runs every time. Would you be willing to talk about It's certainly I've experienced some some difficult times.

I were the Do any particularly difficult periods come to mind uh difficult stretches of time If so, would you be willing to talk about one or two and how you found your way

Out, so to speak. I mean You know, I I think it's the universal thing is that Nobody escapes. Nobody gets out scot free. Um

Nobody suffers like the poor. As Charles Bukowski pointed out. But nobody escapes from suffering. It is the it is the universal condition and it's the you know, it's the reason it's the first of Buddha's truths. Um I I love the output that we do on my website on Tested dot com.

Because I realize we don't make So I do builds uh in my shop on Testa dot com and I do them here in my cave and I realize at a certain point That they're not how to videos. Um, because I'm often discovering the process that I'm exploring on camera. Um, they're more like what happened videos.

And a couple of years ago I was making some spacesuit parts. Um actually if I tilt the camera you can see that I've got Uh murderer's row of uh class. And fictional space suits over here. 'Cause I'm so obsessed with them. And my friend Ryan Nagata in LA is an amazing space suit uh maker. And I was making some parts for him.

And I'm intimidated by the quality of Brian's work and I wanted my pieces to be as good as the output I see comes from his shop. And I had uh I had I was doing this build and I kept screwing it up and I spent this entire day with my camera team here Just consistently getting these things to farther and farther along the line and then boning them with a bad with a bad choice about the tool usage or what I was doing. I was getting my order of operations all screwed up and I ended up finishing the day feeling super, super shitty.

Like depressed about how crappy the day went. And I went home and in this blue funk, I literally had this thought You have no business making stuff. And The the fact is

I feel that. That judge in me. comes up on almost every built. He shows up on almost every build. When I finally got to Industrial Light and Magic in nineteen ninety eight, into their model shop on episodes one and two and space cowboys, I found an incredible group of peers and teachers and friends And there still was not a single build in the five years I spent in that model shop where I didn't feel at some point someone was gonna come up, tap me on the shoulder, and tell me the relief picture's coming out because I clearly have no idea what I'm doing and it's time to go home.

And at a certain point at I L M, I was like, Man, I'm in Valhalla. I'm in the place where like all every model maker in the world wants to end up here and I I I am good enough to get here. Why do I still have so much judgment every time I screw something up? And then I realized, well, that's part of my process. It's part of the process. Um clearly it's gonna happen no matter

how technically competent I get. So I'm just gonna push past it. And On tested that day that I finished feeling so crappy, I came in the next day, we filmed again for a day, and I got the part right. And then I turned to the camera and I explained all of that. Because

Look, I really appreciate the the way in which you were openly last year openly talking about your anxieties and about the things that inhibit you from fulfilling the things that you want to do. Uh I love the way Will Wheaton is so forthright and honest about his difficulties and about depression. Um, and I view it as incumbent on those of us who are able to

find the luck and circumstance to achieve some success to explain that it is not linear It's rarely on purpose. There's so much luck and privilege and love involved in the process and And we all feel uncertain all the time. Because yeah, it really is easy to walk in here and go, Oh my God, you're so productive.

And Well, like I was tweeting last night about Laura Kamp and Simone Yatch, two of my collaborators on one of the episodes of my new show, and I described them as annoyingly productive. I am sometimes annoyed by how productive they are. And I know that I have a fairly high degree of output. Uh and yet I can get jealous about someone else doing something that I'd like to try. Uh I can get venyl. Uh you know Yeah.

We are we're all flawed. Uh Look, a and to be honest, confronting that, confronting the uh the the the the limits of one's ability to be perfect Yeah.

That is tough. So I I I will actually you've asked me to to talk to this and I I think one of the most inst instructive things I can mention is Um, I'm a pleaser. I'm a I'm a I'm a mender. I'm a caretaker. Um And I want people to like me. So I am very, very attuned to the moods and the attitudes in a room when I'm in it.

Um and Uh In my place in my family Uh Mm.

I was good at sort of doing that mending. And it's a terrible thing to be good at doing that because it means you're taking on a responsibility that isn't necessarily yours. Uh And you can suffer trying to be the place where those difficulties end, like being the being the locust that doesn't allow them to get past you.

And it's still very difficult for me to confront. the fact that I'm a flawed human being. There's still some part of me that thinks oh as long as I perform all these things correctly Everything will go smooth. And the answer is No, that's that's fiction.

Nothing will ever go smoothly, no plan ever survives first contact with implementation, and we are all going to screw up and feel unworthy. At a very constant pace in our lives. That's that's being a person. The trick is to be honest about that. I I I really appreciate you.

being willing to share. I I I think as you do that it's it's really important because it's easy particularly in in or I should say immersed in an online world where where very often what you see is the highlight reel

It's easy to feel uniquely flawed or alone. And uh I Grew up But Seeing it.

uh not just bipolar disorder, but schizophrenia in my family. Uh I I know you've uh certainly witnessed a fair amount of bipolar disorder. And Uh If

If anyone listening is going through a tough patch realizing that you are not alone. And you're not uniquely flawed and that it is sort of part of the ride. on this journey that we call human life. Uh so thank you for

Being willing. To To speak to it because I th I think it is very important. it it will become increasingly important, I think, for people like yourself to Speak to it when you have a chance because

I think increasingly what we see online will be Aside from the What bleeds leads headlines. Uh very often self selected highlight reels of sorts. Um which can make people feel very isolated. So thank you for that. And Uh

I have just a few more questions. Uh but let's let's start with Uh and I don't say this lightly. I I am so excited to get your book. Uh it's already ordered.

And uh it is your first book. Which which a lot like first funds for investing. Like I'm very bullish on first books. Uh particularly after A A career like yours.

And having practiced explaining and having workshopped So many things that no doubt made it into the book in some form. or another. Uh could you talk so I I have it here described as a love letter to creativity, secret thrills, exploring, making and productive obsession. Could you tell us a little bit more About the book, please.

Okay, so uh When I when I sold this book to the publisher to Simon to Atria, it's Simon and Schuster. Um The chapter in the book that I used as my as my North Star is a chapter called Use More Cooling Fluid.

Which is a it's a joke that I've told for years. Which is if I could go back and tell my young self one thing. This is an interviewer's favorite question. If I could go back in time and tell my young self one thing, it would be Use more cooling fluid and I'm being facetious to a certain extent, but Actually there are some interesting keys to the castle in that in that

Phrase. Because it's not it on one hand, and I cover this in the chapter, I talk about why cooling fluid is important. How when you're cutting metal with metal Uh keeping your cutting blade cool is really vital. And I explain deeply the physics of what happens to metal when you let it get hot, how you cut metal with metal, the differentials between the hardnesses of the materials that you're using and where it can go south. And then

From there. I go on to talk about how using more cooling fluid is about taking extra time. In order to do something right. And that actually is about a wider philosophy of addressing your work. And by addressing, I mean putting the things that you're working on in front of you at a comfortable position so your hands can actually operate them. And even that.

is a philosophical choice that we make when we make things.'Cause sometimes I'm like, Oh I can do this without removing those three bolts and then bang, you know, something breaks. And I'm bone. Um Taking the time Where it's necessary. At the same time as trying to go as fast as you can.

to be able to have a reasonable return on the investment of time you have in this project, especially if you're working for higher Taking the time to do it right saves a lot of time on the back end, and it is an ongoing conversation in my head between Future me and past me. And So that was the chapter and we so we thought that all the chapters would end up being like I describe one specific maker skill and talk about the physics of it and then talk about the philosophy and open that up to wider and wider onion skins of philosophy.

Except that When I started to look at other things that I know, I definitely deeply understand the physics of cooling fluid and I understand the physics of the glues that I use. So the glue chapter is also very much in that vein. But as far as a lot of other skills I'm such a uh a a a generalist that I am mediocre at all the other things that I know and thus I felt really strongly that I shouldn't present myself as any kind of authority on these things if it didn't come naturally. That if I researched heavily the physics of something that I didn't quite understand, well then I'm kind of being dishonest in this book. And so as I started to flesh out the other chapters with the things that I wanted to talk about, I realized that

There was more to talk about from my autobiographical details that led me to the conclusions I came to about how I run my shop space, about how I deal with collaborations and partnerships, about how I'm a husband and a friend and a father. Um and so Whereas originally I thought it would be fifty percent instructional and fifty percent

Uh uh uh philosophical with some autobiographical stuff peppered in, it ends up being about one third each. Um Both my editor.

And I were surprised by the book that came out. When I when I gave him the the the final manuscript in December, he was like, Wow! This is totally different than I thought, but It's a it's great, it works, it's it it's its own thing and There's a there's a quote. In the book from Andrew Stanton, uh Pixar director.

directed John Carter, he directed The Finding Dory films and many other things. And he's an amazing Andy is like the story guy and he loves unpacking story. And he was telling me things like You know, Pixar has institutionalized the late understanding of what a story is about.

Right. So he's like, You go to the client and you say, We're gonna dig up a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We're gonna spend millions of dollars digging up a Tyrannosaurus Rex and he's like, and there comes a point when you're digging, you realize, oh crap, we've got a Stegosaurus. Are you gonna have the guts to go to the funders and tell them, you know what? Turns out We have a stegosaurus. Um, Andy said that

The central Theme of Monsters Inc. Which is that the scream is the currency of the world. He said that didn't Come to them.

Until like a year before they were finished. But once they understood it. It so frame the world. that they invested in all of the changes they had to make. to weave that into the plot and make it central because

They discovered they had a stegosaurus, so they had to service that. Amazing. Amazing. You know, thinking also of Uh spirited away where we started this conversation Uh if if you ever have the chance, and maybe you've already been, but

If you go to Tokyo Ghibli Museum. I'm going. My wife and I are planning a trip right now to go to Kyoto and Tokyo. Oh, you're gonna have the best time, particularly with the the the trained eye That you can use for the details. Look for the marbles that are within the metal work on the spiral staircase. It's

really just incredible. I mean they have the the full scale cat bus Yeah it's Everything you can imagine from the the canon of his work, including some of his working desks. Uh and it really digs into the process in a way that I think

uh you will find enchanting. Uh Yeah. There's one other thing I wanted to say about the book, which is that you know, as we were talking about sharing our personal experiences in the hopes that they resonate with people who might feel that their own experience is unique and keeps them from exploring what they want to explore. Um I also took as axiomatic

This wonderful phrase I heard from Mary Carr in an interview when she was writing Liers Club, her first memoir. Uh She was talking to Tobias Wolf about it and he said if you're gonna write about yourself as a young uh pre and mid pubescent girl. You need to write about yourself.

As you were. He said don't sugar coat it and the phrase he used was take no cure for your dignity. And I love that phrase so much. Because when we really do share those parts of ourselves where we are venal and jealous and weird and sad and uncertain and vulnerable.

That's when we get to connect with other people. And so in the very beginning of this book, I I say That I like to think of this book as a permission slip. from me to you, if you need to be told, to fly your freak flag and try the thing that you can't stop thinking about, even though it's weird. And I admit that my This whole shop is filled with my weird hobbies of early computer history and costuming and space suits, and I'm not necessarily solving the world's problems in this space.

But I am feeding myself and I am using this as a springboard about my experience to help others follow their weird passions. And that's my goal. I think that's an admirable goal. And people can say hello

On Twitter, Don't Try This is your handle. At Don't Try This on Instagram and Facebook, the real Adam Savage. They can certainly find the book at anywhere books are sold, also at Adamsavage Book dot com Uh are there any other places or any other any other Places online, any other projects that you would uh suggest people check out? Well, so uh I just wrapped and announced a brand new show I'm making for the science channel called Savage Builds. That starts airing on June twelfth.

Um, among the things we did on that show, uh I is I absurd engineering. I work with different collaborators in every episode. In one episode I worked with a master blacksmith to make a sword out of a meteorite. In another I worked with the Colorado School of Minds. with an N, not mimes, um to make a three D printed suit of Ironman armor. Uh out of Three D printed titanium. Blowing. Um

I also have a a bag and apparel company uh called Savage Industries and at AdamSavage dot com I make bag out of uh used and recycled sail cloth. Uh and we have a number of other small projects that are also sell plans and kits for making your own bag if you want uh to go that route. Uh and I think that is all of the things going on right now. Amazing. Well, never any shortage of projects and I will link to all of those in the show notes as well. So for folks listening, if you are commuting or juggling or doing something that doesn't allow you to take notes at the moment. Uh you can find uh certainly links to everything we've discussed at Tim.blog forward slash podcast as well. And Adam, this has been such a pleasure. It's always fun to see you and uh I hope we get to share uh scrambled eggs sometime soon. I I like I said, I'm coming to Austin on the book tour. I will uh I'll pin you uh give you plenty of notice so that hopefully we can go out and have a beer and uh maybe some scramble diets. That sounds that sounds fantastic. Is there anything else that you would like to

say any closing comments, suggestions, anything anything at all that you'd like to add before we we close up? Oh no, I think we've covered a lovely wide range of stuff today. All right, well thank you so much, Adam. I wish you all the best on the book tour. I'm really excited to dig into this and go get a glue gun and start my own cardboard project. So thank you for what pictures, man. I will take pictures and I'll make sure I get the process so it's not just this pretty final shot or not so pretty final shot. I'll get some of the ugly in betweens. And uh really, really uh lovely to see you again. And um Until next time.

Thank you so much for for sharing your stories and uh to be continued, I hope. Thanks to him. Alright, bye bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite.

of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode of the Tim Ferris Show is brought to you by Atletic Greens. I get asked all the time. If I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably athletic ingredients. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in the 4 Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so, I've been using it since before that. And I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick, or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance and overall

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